“But now the men are being transferred to this ward, I can expect hordes of their relatives at around three?”
“Just two people at their bedside as usual, Staff Nurse. Visiting hours between three and four and no exceptions. The doctor will make his assessments tomorrow morning, so expect him with Matron then. I can’t see there being any problems, most of the men just need bed rest, so when I get back they’ll probably have gone.”
Let’s hope so, thought Katie, ‘cos I can’t see when it’s my turn for a holiday that I’ll be getting much of a rest!
Chapter 18
“Good Morning. May I speak to the lady of the house? A Mrs. Haines, I believe.”
Sister Gill stood at the front door of Selwyn Lodge speaking to Olive, who had been in the hallway, brushing down the stairs.
“I’ll get Miss Hannah,” she replied and, rather rudely, she thought, shut the door in her face.
“I’m so sorry,” a young dark haired woman said, as she came to open the door again a few minutes later. “Can I help you? The maid said you are here to see Mrs. Haines. Did you have an appointment to see her? I’m Mrs. Dockerty, her daughter. Can I be of any help?”
“I’m Sister Gill, from Clatterbridge Hospital. I don’t have an appointment to see your mother, but it is urgent that I speak with her if I can.”
“Perhaps you would like to come in for a moment then. If it’s a donation, Mother usually makes those at the committee meetings I believe, but anyway do come in.”
Hannah took her into the drawing room, wondering why on earth a nurse would come all the way from the hospital to visit Maggie. Not just an ordinary nurse either; a Sister, if the woman was to be believed. Though she wasn’t wearing uniform, the pleasant-faced woman had the manner of someone used to giving orders. Hannah gestured to the sofa, asking politely if her visitor would like a cup of tea.
“That is very kind of you, dear, but I must catch the twelve o’ clock train after I have spoken with you.”
Hannah noticed now that the nurse was carrying a small carpet bag, which she had placed carefully near the settee.
“ To get to the point, I have a patient who says his name is Michael Haines.”
Sister Gill paused as the young woman in front of her gasped, then watched in concern as Hannah virtually collapsed into a fireside chair.
“Are you all right, my dear? Shall I call your maid? Good Heavens, I thought someone would be glad to hear that he is safe and well.”
Sister Gill leant over Hannah, grasping her wrist to check her pulse rate, noting as she did so that the young woman had a roundness to her stomach. It was probably due to her condition that she had begun to faint.
“I’m fine, no, no, don’t worry. My maid will be busy seeing to my little boy while I’m in here with you. I’ll be all right in a moment. It was just the shock, you see. As far as we are concerned, Michael is serving in India. In fact my mother received a letter only a few weeks ago. It seemed then he was very well.”
The nurse sighed to herself then sat back onto the sofa. She wouldn’t be catching the twelve o’ clock train to her sister’s house after all. Wasn’t it her duty to help her fellow man?
“Michael has been in a state of delirium until a few days ago, while riddled with dysentery and sickness. He was one of those who came over in a ship from Bengal and sent to our hospital. He told me that he had taken a detachment of men on a reconnaissance trip, because of reports of a rebel group further north, who were intent on causing trouble. As you probably know, since the Raj was given his power, the region has been mostly peaceful, but there’s a small minority who dislike this collusion with the British and Michael unfortunately fell foul of them. I believe there was a skirmish, but your brother managed to escape, then found himself in jungle conditions along with others who had got away. They trailed around for days, hungry, thirsty and desperate to find their unit, but they never did. It was a group of natives who were out hunting that found them eventually, but as you will understand, by then the soldiers were in a desperate state. They were reunited with their platoon and given medical care, but a sickness was already rife throughout the company and their condition didn’t help matters as well.”
“So, this patient of yours said that his name is Michael Haines, of this address. Can you be sure of that? Has he any papers to prove it?”
“Why, no,” Sister Gill replied, taken aback. “But why would he make up such a story anyway?”
“I don’t know,” said Hannah, dully. “It just seems strange that he’s making this claim when it was only a few weeks ago that Mother received a letter from him.”
“Well, when you think about it, the letter would have had a long way to travel. It isn’t like our post that can be on your doorstep the very next day. Perhaps he wrote it the day before he embarked on his mission and it was carried there and then by a messenger to the nearest port.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Hannah said, after a few seconds silence, while Sister Gill looked appreciatively at the furnishings in the elegant room.
“My mother has gone away and I don’t know when she’ll be back again. I can’t possibly nurse a sick person myself; you can see the condition I’m in.”
Sister Gill looked at her askance.
“We’re not asking you to nurse your brother, Mrs. Dockerty. I’ve been asked by Matron to call and inform your mother of his whereabouts. Is it too much to ask if you would be prepared to visit him, seeing as your mother has gone away?”
“No, I’m sorry, Sister, I’m not prepared to come up to your hospital on what is probably a wild goose chase. As you can see I’m expecting a baby and I will not put it at risk, nor my six month old son, by putting myself near an infectious man who says he is my relative. If he is who he says he is, he can wait until he is clear of any infections. He might have something else lurking, typhoid or cholera for all I know. I’m sorry, but as I say, I’m not prepared to put my family at risk.”
Sister Gill rose from her chair abruptly and picked up her bag; she was trying not to show it, but she was raging inwardly. The poor man, who had nearly died for his Queen and country, was being given the brush-off by his sister. And she had a train to catch, didn’t she? There was no way she was walking back to the hospital to give him the bad news today.
“Well, thank you, Mrs. Dockerty, for sparing me your time, but I must be away to the station. I’ll pass on your good wishes to your brother, shall I, when I return to the hospital in a few days time?”
With that, Sister Gill saw herself out of Selwyn Lodge, leaving Hannah in a state of bewilderment, wondering what she was going to do. Michael turning up in their lives couldn’t have come at much worse a time.
Katie tiptoed into the side ward to check on the young officer that had been admitted to her ward that morning. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. Win had told her that only moments ago the man had been close to tears.
“I took him a drink and he asked me when he could expect a visitor. I told him that visiting time was over and he sort of groaned and turned away.”
“Sister Gill only went to see his mother this morning, so he couldn’t expect her to come dashing down so quickly. I know her; Maggie Haines, she’s a very busy woman. Owns the Sheldon Company. You know, loans and vouchers and property, that kind of thing. She lives in a big house on Burton Road, called Selwyn Lodge, with her daughter Hannah and Hannah’s husband, Eddie Dockerty.”
“Oh, he’s from a very good family then. I’m surprised he’s here slumming it with the rest of us. You’d think he’d be sent to one of those Officer Wards at the County Hospital.”
“Nobody knew who he was until one of the soldiers told Sister. There doesn’t seem to be any airs and graces about him, though, and he’s not kept ringing the bell.”
Katie stood at the side of Michael’s bed, trying to put a face to his name, though she couldn’t recollect ever seeing him really. He and his sister were brought up in a different world to her.
Though his handsome face still had a pallor of sickness and his short brown hair was damp with grease, Katie knew that his condition must have improved dramatically in the time he had lain in Isolation. She had seen from the sketches in her “Notes on Nursing” what a body looked like suffering from dehydration. Not a pleasant sight; but this body could look splendid once he had been fattened up. She blushed at the thoughts she was having; they were not a dedicated nurse’s thoughts at all. She tucked in the sheet where it had escaped from the bedstead to cover the confusion in her mind.
The man’s eyelids fluttered, then opened fully. He smiled weakly at Katie and in that moment she was lost. Staff Nurse Tibbs, career nurse with spinsterhood looming, looked into her patient’s eyes and promptly fell in love.
Hannah sat for a long time in the drawing room after she had seen Sister Gill off the premises. She was in a state of shock, with no one there to turn to. It would be hours before Eddie came home and Maggie had left the morning before. Her thoughts were racing and her heart thudded painfully as she considered what it meant if Michael came back home. The woman must have thought her a cold-hearted bitch, seemingly not interested in her brother’s welfare, but Hannah knew her brother well. It would be him and her against each other as he asserted his right to take over the company, asserting his right to live at Selwyn Lodge as well. He’d be arrogant, pompous and overbearing, riding roughshod over Eddie; belittling the hard work that her husband had done. Then there was the unthinkable to dwell on. Michael might have known about her and Jeremy. What if he told Eddie, that she, Hannah, had slept with his upper class friend? Their marriage would be over; her children without a father. Hannah shuddered at the thought of it all as she tried to take it in.
“Miss Hannah, will yer be wantin’ your lunch soon? Only I can’t set the table and carry little Johnny too.”
“Sorry, Olive, I’m coming now. Don’t set the table in the dining room, there being only me. I’ll eat my lunch in the conservatory today.”
Olive’s face took on a “hard done by” expression. She was expected to carry out her household duties, but be a nursemaid too. She’d been saying to Alec, her boyfriend, only yesterday that she was considering looking for another position. What with the Missus clearing off like she had, Miss Hannah walking around in a daze and Mr. Dockerty coming in at all hours expecting to be waited on, it was all getting to be too much for her. She wouldn’t mind if she was privy to the reasons for all this upheaval, but she wasn’t. And what was that nurse doing here from Clatterbridge this morning, she would like to know?
“It’ll be something to do with Mrs. Haines’s charity work,” Joan had said. “With her going off to recuperate with relatives in Ireland, she probably hasn’t had time to let anyone at the hospital know.”
But Olive didn’t think it was that. The nurse had looked angry as she had walked away from Selwyn Lodge and Miss Hannah had looked downcast, as if she had been given some serious news.
When Eddie got home later, Olive was convinced that she was onto something. Miss Hannah had bundled him into the drawing room, as soon as Mr. Dockerty had put his key in the lock. She hovered as near as possible, listening first to the muted voice of Hannah, then Eddie’s, raised and angry. Whatever it was, it was causing a quarrel. Olive didn’t wait to hear anymore.
Eddie stood staring at Hannah in disbelief as she quietly told him of Michael’s reappearance.
“Didn’t yer say that your mother had a letter from him just a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, but she told me she didn’t answer it because he was asking her to buy him out of the Army. I think she couldn’t face the fact that he would want to come back again.”
“So she’s cleared off to God knows where and left us to deal with the situation?”
“Well, it may look like that, Eddie, but how could she know that he’d take ill and wind up in the local hospital?”
“Oh, men like Michael always find a way out of anything that doesn’t suit them. I’ve heard of men injuring themselves so they could be discharged on medical grounds. Did the Sister say what kind of condition that your brother is in?”
“It sounded as if he had picked an infection up. That’s why I said I wouldn’t visit, because I’m in the family way, but besides that, Eddie, I don’t want to go and see him. You know what this means, don’t you? He’ll take over everything; the businesses, this house. As Maggie’s son, he has the right to. Even if he’s never done a thing.”
Hannah began to cry as she contemplated leaving this beautiful house that she had spent her life in. Her dream had been to fill it with her and Eddie’s sons.
Eddie paced, his head, like Hannah’s, filled with desperation. He couldn’t let it happen, their paradise would be snatched away.
“So, he’s expecting his mother to visit? Is that what the woman from the hospital said? And you told her that Maggie had gone away and you don’t know when she’ll be back again?”
Hannah nodded dumbly.
“Then we’ve got time to do something about it!”
“How?!”
“Well, before Maggie went away she visited the solicitors in Chester. You remember you went with her, because she wasn’t feeling very well. Then next day she went to see Mr. Taylor at the local bank. I met her there at eleven o’ clock and I had to give a sample signature. I’m the only one who can sign for any payments or authorize the sending of any cheques! So, Michael can huff and puff as much as he wants to, but until Maggie gets back, there is nothing he can do.”
“Except make life unpleasant for us,” Hannah said, thinking of her secret liaison with Jeremy. If things got nasty, she was sure her brother would blackmail her with that.
“Oh Hannah, don’t worry. You can write to Maggie and tell her of Michael’s homecoming. Get her to sign something to say that we should be living here. By the time he gets out of hospital it’ll all be sown up nicely and your brother then will see that I’ll be calling the tune.”
“Eddie, this plan of yours will only give us a little time, you know. We should have something up our sleeve for the future.”
“No, I’ve just told you, Hannah, you mustn’t worry; we’ll never be thrown out of our home.”
“There’s something I haven’t told you, but I’m tired now. There’s little Johnny to see to and I’m sure you’re hungry, Eddie. I’ll tell you later when we’ve had our supper and baby’s been put to bed.”
Maggie lay on her bed in the room that she had booked at the Adelphi. She’d been given a suite on the second floor. Her mind kept whirling in a dance of anxiety, as she contemplated the journey ahead. Not only the passage to Sligo but the months of being holed up in Ballina until the time she might give birth. What could she have done but go along with Hannah’s blunt suggestion? Write to Bridget at the Heaney Hotel and ask if she could rent a room? So, here she was, waiting for the packet steamer that didn’t sail until the morning. The letter she had written to Bridget would precede her by a day. What if she got there and found that Bridget had let all her rooms to the summer visitors? What if Bridget didn’t believe her tale that Jack had passed away? What if she told Bridget that she was expecting Jack’s baby and there wasn’t one? How foolish and what a waste of time it was all going to be. Why, oh why, had she listened to Johnny’s silver tongue? Look at where it had got her. Men were all the same, when she came to think about it. Jack had fed her a broth of lies then had walked out on her when it had suited him.
Maggie closed her eyes, hoping that sleep would come so that her mind could get some rest from all its troubled thoughts.
“So you’re telling me that your Mother is expectin’ and the father of the baby isn’t my father in law, but it’s me Uncle Johnny! Hannah! You’re kiddin’ me, aren’t yer? Both of them are as old as Methuselah. So, this is what you were waitin’ to tell me? Does he know? Does Uncle Johnny know that Maggie’s expectin’? No, Hannah, you must have got it wrong somehow. Did yer Mother tell yer this story? She’s made it up, hasn’t she?”
>
Eddie felt totally bewildered with Hannah’s explanation of Maggie’s sudden flight. He kept running his fingers through his hair and pacing up and down.
“Get me a drink, Hannah. A drop of that brandy will do. How long have yer known that that was the real reason? She told me her trip was to do with a friend.”
“Well, she could hardly tell you that she was in a certain condition, could she? Not her son in law. She might not be anyway; all this could be to do with her age.”
“You’ve lost me, Hannah. What has all this got to do with Uncle Johnny then, or her age?”
“Mother and Uncle Johnny spent a week together in the Adelphi. He hadn’t just met her that morning as he’d said; they’d both come over from Liverpool.”
Hannah turned away from Eddie, feeling a bubbling of hysteria. This was a serious explanation she was giving him, but the weeks of agonising with Maggie had been just as painful for her.
“You’re saying that they were lovers, Maggie and Uncle Johnny, but because of their ages a baby may or may not be a possibility? I don’t understand, Hannah. Surely a woman knows if she’s having a baby? If they’ve been lovers it’s probably true.”
“Not necessarily, Eddie. When a woman reaches Maggie’s age, their monthlies stop and that could be Mother’s problem.
“Oh, please Hannah, spare me the detail, some things I don’t want to know about!”
“I’m just giving you an explanation. I persuaded her to go to Bridget’s in Ireland. You know the people I told you about, who we stayed with in Ballina? No one else knows her there; she’ll see a doctor and if she is expecting she’ll say that it belongs to Jack.”
“And if she isn’t, she’ll stay a few weeks until she’s feeling better, then she’ll come home again?”
“Yes, that’s right, and meantime we’ve got the problem of Michael.”
“And Uncle Johnny. Strange if they were lovers that he’s not been seen again.”
“Well, they’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding. She did write a note to apologise, but it seems she forgot to send it. If you remember that was before she caught the ‘flu.”
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